Hope and Hollow Men
by Onba
Summary: He is hollow and she is hope. Ulquiorra centric, with some one-sided Ulquihime.


_We are the hollow men_

_We are the stuffed men_

_Leaning together_

_Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!_

_Our dried voices, when_

_We whisper together_

_Are quiet and meaningless_

_As wind in dry grass_

_Or rats' feet over broken glass_

_In our dry cellar_

* * *

Ulquiorra died young. By the law of the time he had been a man but was still young of heart and had hope for the future.

Looking back, he can't help but be sickened by it.

Those he had previously called friends turned on him to save their own hides. They sowed lies, claiming him their sacrilegious leader, putting all the blame and blasphemy on him.

He was tortured until he confessed. To what exactly that was, he was not sure, he simply wanted the pain to stop.

His family did nothing to clear his name. Instead they denounced him and watch with disgust as the noose was tightened around his neck. The last thing he saw as he choked and thrashed was the disdainful faces of his father and brothers.

It was several years after this, after watching them move on as though he never existed, after seeing his deceitful _friends _go _free_, that he saw how cold and meaningless the universe was.

It was at that point he gave up his heart and became a hollow.

The pain had been unimaginable but it didn't stop once the transformation ended. There was something inside of him that _hurt._ It was an emptiness, like starvation. It was a gushing, festering _wound_ that throbbed in every part of his being. But most of all it was a seething hot burn.

A burn that told him that the ones who did this too him _needed _to pay.

He quickly found that eating souls lessened his pain—for a time. Souls with a sweeter smell also tasted better and took away even more of his suffering. Sometimes it seemed that when he had a particularly tasty soul, his pain did not come back as powerful as it had been.

Then he found out he was not alone. There were others like him in a desert word, and when he ate them his pain lessened even further.

He grew quickly in this new world and became stronger.

One day though, he was drawn into a vortex. Unlike those in the Living World, this one was not of wind, but of power, a power that drew all hollows in the vicinity to it, even if they did not wish to go.

It smashed Ulquiorra and all the others together into one, massive being. That was when a new suffering began for him.

Voices were everywhere, screaming, struggling, in what appeared to be a black void, but it was no void at all because it was full. So full the he was suffocating, and he too found himself screaming and thrashing.

He needed to get out! Away, from all the deafening, maddening sounds and crushing weight all around him!

It took fighting and clawing, but eventually he won. Over all the hundreds and thousands of other hollows, he took control of the body he had been forced into.

Before the body could only do things that all those making it wished it to. If they smelled something sweet, they went after it. If they feared or felt pain, they moved away.

Now that Ulquiorra ruled over it though, he could make it do what he wished… and he wished to eat.

Like before, the more of his own that he consumed the more the pain subsided and the more the screeching voices in is head dimmed.

Eventually the body transformed again and voices became nothing more than a whisper in the back of his head.

A whisper that haunted him, because he instinctually knew that should he ever stop eating he would devolve back into that mass of screaming and suffocation, never to be free again.

For some reason others like him now collected together. Why, he was not sure. Wouldn't such an alliance among cannibalistic creatures only lead to betrayal and death?

Still, they grouped together, and they warred against each other, and when their numbers were too many they turned and slaughtered the weaker members.

Ulquiorra would have none of it, though. He would not be so stupid again. He would remain alone.

That was, until Aizen came with an offer to all powerful hollows; Pledge your undying loyalty to him and he would move you to a form above all others, one that you would never fall from. One were you would never fear of sinking into that painful existence again.

Ulquiorra accepted without pause.

It did not matter what Lord Aizen told him to do or if, in the end, his new Lord turned on him. Ulquiorra just wanted the pain to stop, and it did.

He still had to eat from time to time, whether it be human food or souls, but this existence was far better.

In his Lord's army, Ulquiorra eventually won the place of fourth. He sought no higher place because that one was perfect for him.

Fourth was such an over looked number, high enough so he need not take orders from trash and low enough so the power hungry often overlooked him.

Lord Aizen's orders also gave him something he had not had in a long time: a higher purpose.

The universe may be without meaning, but one needed a purpose to go on. Before, Ulquiorra had simply stayed alive, now he was helping his Lord become a god.

Goals were pointless in a meaningless world, but that did not matter. Lord Aizen could do as he wished. Ulquiorra would follow him to oblivion, not because he _cared_ about the man. No, Ulquiorra cared for no one. He would do this because it was now his purpose, and because it was the price he had paid for his ascension.

* * *

_Shape without form, shade without color,_

_Paral__yze__d force, gesture without motion;_

* * *

The woman burned him, for what reason he could not grasp.

He shouldn't care whether or not she held on to her hope or her friends; it did not affect him, after all. He was simply supposed to keep her alive until Lord Aizen ordered otherwise.

Such meaningless things wouldn't help her. He knew firsthand that it was all a lie.

Still, to see her stare out at the moon so hopefully, to hear her confess loyalty to his Lord while her eyes screamed defiance . . . It just made him _hate_ her.

The bonds known as friendship and love did not exist. They were only illusions those with weak minds held on to. Something they used to instill meaning into their worthless lives.

It disgusted him how people could lie to themselves like that. Didn't they see that pain is all that could come from things like hope, trust, and love? In the end, humans were selfish creatures that would always choose themselves over another. The woman was a fool to think otherwise.

Once, Ulquiorra tried to tell the woman this by quoting one of the human world's own scholars;Friedrich Nietzsche.

"**In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torment****s,****" **he had said.

For a brief moment the woman paused in her stargazing to stare at him. She blinked, and he couldn't help but notice that her eyes were still red and moist from the crying she did when he was not around to see.

Hesitantly, as though the woman was not sure if it were truly wise, she open her lips and uttered back, in such a timid but unrepentantly defiant way:

"**Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route." **

It . . . surprised him to hear her say such a thing.

She smiled weakly, sadly, the first and last smile he will ever see it grace her cheeks, before telling him the quote was from François Duc de La Rochefoucauld.

He turned, leaving with the dinner he had just brought without comment. If the woman wished to hold onto such weakness, so be it, but he would have no more part it. It was her suffering, not his.

Still, a part of him burned and seethed with hate for her. Why it was so baffled him. It was not his concern, she was nothing to him. Everything was nothing to him.

But She was not the only thing that made him burn, her pitiful _friends_ did too.

They all had such _hop__e. _It sickened him, especially the orange haired one.

He had watched the woman the night she had said goodbye in order to make sure she did not go back on her word. He knew the feelings she had for the shinigami.

It only disgusted him more.

Maybe that was why he went against Lord Aizen's orders for the first time and attacked the bboy.

He simply could not stand that filth any longer.

* * *

Inside, Ulquiorra scolded himself for being so blind.

In the end, it all revolved around her. The woman really seems to bring out the worst in him.

Mostly it had been about destroying her, breaking her fragile spirit. She held everything that he did not; a good life, true friends, and meaning for her existence.

He sought to remove those things at any cost . . . almost any cost.

Even in death, he would have achieved his goal had he not pulled his dying body up and cut Kurosaki's horn. He really should have sliced the boy's head off, but for some reason that thought had not occurred to him.

The only thing that had crossed his mind was that the _stupid_ woman was right into the cero's path.

What did she think that would have accomplished?

That didn't matter now, though. Nothing did. Nothing. He was beginning to dissolve and Kurosaki was whining. Why couldn't the boy just kill him and at least grant him a quick death?

The longer he stayed alive the more he thought, mostly about his mistakes. . . most of which involved the woman. He really did not want to think about her because when he did he began to regret.

Regret was the most useless emotion of all because one could never take back what they had done.

He could not help but look over at her now: dirty, tear stained, bruised, and even a little bloody. Ulquiorra realized that the only thing he has ever truly regretted since his death was trying to harm her.

She must be terrified of him, but then she says she's not and something aches in him. For what he's done he deserves to be shunned by her.

As he continues to dissolve, he suddenly has the urge to touch something alive and warm, a thing he has not done in centuries. He can't even remember what a gentle touch was like.

No, he's lying to himself again. He simply wants to touch _her_. He remembers when she slapped him. At that time he had paid no mind to the fleeting heat of her hand, but now, as he is dying, if he could just . . .

No, that's not to be, because his hand dissolves before she can touch it. He didn't deserve such a thing anyway.

Still, he can't help but notice she reached out too, and he feels something warm spark in his chest, right before he fades into oblivion.

Ulquiorra's last fleeting thought is that he hopes, _hopes_, at the very least, she will not remember him as a monster, even though he knows that was all he ever really was.

* * *

_Those who have crossed_

_With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom_

_Remember us—if at all—not as lost_

_Violent souls, but only_

_As the hollow men_

_The stuffed men._

* * *

A/N: The words in italics are the first part of T.S. Eliot's "Hollow men". Really, I think the whole poem fits Ulquiorra nicely but this part just pegs him.

Please review and tell me what you think! I can get better if you don't help me!


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